


of hawthorn and steel

by gay_bird



Category: Kapitán Stein a notár Barbarič - Juraj Červenák
Genre: 16th Century CE, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Animal Death, Changeling Bohdan Jaroš, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fairy Tale Elements, Families of Choice, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jaros Doesn’t Understand How Affection Works, Joachim Stein Is a Good Dad, M/M, Magical Realism, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Non-Graphic Smut, Non-Graphic Violence, Platonic Relationships, Suicidal Thoughts, teenagers in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-01-15 22:53:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gay_bird/pseuds/gay_bird
Summary: There are wild things in the world, unconquered by steel and gunpowder. Wild things, lurking in the deep forest shadows, and beneath the mountainsides. Wild things, hidden in young soldiers with inhuman eyes.In other words, the one fic in which everyone finds out why Václav Jaroš might have been right about calling his son monstrous, Barbarič gets his worldview shattered, Johanka is marked down as scared and horny, and Bohdan just lowkey wants to die.





	1. foxglove

All stories start somewhere. Like spiderwebs the latch themselves onto bits and pieces of events and then spread out like palaces of air and silk. This story might start in a lot of places. It could start with a merchant's daughter being married off to an executioner. It could start with a child, barely a couple of days old, growing cold in its crib and feebly reaching out to the pretty lights it had seen above before it closed its eyes. It could start with a bundle. It could start with the legends of the fair folk snatching of children improperly cared for by their mothers. It could start with a wish, with a realization, with hot coals and eggshells. 

Instead, it will start with a girl. The girl was small and lithe, with a barely contained braid of matted black hair and a foxy face. She didn’t really have a name, at least not one audibly pronounceable in this world, but if she were to be referred by one, she went by Dorota. The girl slid between the cracks and corners of Prague’s old city, her bare feet not leaving a trace on the cobblestones, nor snow. She was following someone. A man, to be more specific, and the small bundle of fabric he was carrying. He stopped in front of a house, as clearly from before the fire, as it was run down, and looked around, before stepping to the door. It was not as if there was much that could’ve worsened his reputation, but what he was about to attempt could very easily get his head under the sword he made his living with. A knock echoed through the crisp night air and Dorota inhaled sharply as the door opened. It wasn’t a good place, neither was it a place that allowed her to enter. The street filled with hushed words and the smell of sage and iron. She froze behind a barrel in the opening of a side-street right by the house and stayed there, breathing quick as a trapped animal, until the heavy wooden door slammed behind the man, silencing the soft cries of an infant. 

Dorota was a selfish thing, much like all of her kind, but she could not allow to whatever was bound to happens in that house follow through. Her Queen was not a merciful one, and the consequences would be far more dire and painful than whatever the child could endure. The layer of magic, lax and warm over her skin, shifted and curled around her. Nails shortened and paled, pupils rounded, ears shortened and hair slipped into smooth strands. She stood up and with a final, glamor-strengthening breath started walking towards the house. 

The flash of pain hit her skin and coiled around her neck like a viper, hissing and white-hot, making her step back behind the borders of the household. She stifled a cry of pain with a quick bite on the inside of her cheek and rolled up her sleeve to inspect the damage. The stripe of skin where the protective spell first hit her reverted to its true, goldish-green color, now pale and inflamed by with some sort of a burn. Dorota hissed and rolled the sleeve back down. If the protection saw through her glamor, damn the glamor. Her nails darkened and elongated and her step shifted ever so slightly from one of a proper lady to a one of a predator. Claws first, she lunged at the protective spell surrounding the house.

_ The bundle of cloth shifted in her arms and looked up at her with a pair of bird-like eyes. “It is on you to make sure that he survives, understood?” _

She fell back, the blisters on her fingers blazing against the ice on the ground. 

The girl pulled herself up, her ears twitching with agitation as she approached yet again.

_ It was so easy. The mother was always busy, desperately trying to please her husband. She barely noticed the cooling form of her child in the crib under a moonlit window. She barely noticed the shade exchanging it for a for a living, squirming thing with bird-like eyes. “Good luck, little one,” the girl that could be called Dorota whispered before she slid back into the shadows.  _

This time, she didn’t manage to prevent a cry of pain from escaping. The heat on her wounds made the blisters burst and her teeth bite down on her lip hard enough to draw blood. From inside, a wave of blazing, constricting magic, not dissimilar to the one surrounding the house, carried a child’s cry. The impact of clawed feet sprayed up the snow, as she ran around the corner. There must have been a weaker spot through which she could get in. Coils of her magic unfurled through the alleyways, until she slid into halt by one of the walls of the house, feeling up the lightest of tears in the protective layers. Dorota bared her rapidly sharpening teeth and let the streams of magic carry her attack.

_ She buried the child into the soft ground under the clattering of leafless oak branches. She danced and sung on the grave until the soil settled and the spirit departed. It was always good to thank those who let them take their place in this world. She left the lifeless body of Bohdan Jaroš feed the ancient oak grove behind her and slid back into her place in the branches of the apple tree above the Jaroš household to watch her charge.  _

Her knees nearly buckled under the pain, as flashes and flashes of burns rose on her body. Dorota leaned heavily onto the wall, hurt and drained, but within the household. She begun walking towards the front door, ready to do anything. She would kill every man in that house if it meant keeping the changeling alive. She would…

The magic swirling within the building rose up, foaming and calling out and then it crashed back into the spot it begun from. It threw her of balance, but it also threw her out of her frenzy. The child was gone. If she went in, she would be gone too. That was worse than the retribution she would face from the Queen. She staggered a step backwards. The feeling, the crashing wave. A sharp infant’s wail tore through the night. She looked up and reached out. The changeling was gone. Where she expected to feel the cold, wild presence she grew to know as the child, there was just a regular human. They did it. And they were successful. A second cry joined the child into the night. 

All stories begin with events. Sometimes several of them with night. Some people would tell stories about the January night when devils fought above the streets of Prague. Some talk about a stray fox, lost within the stone maze of the mother of all cities. Some tell about a brilliant mystic who managed to banish dark magics from an infant and who carried the ritual through even as all the forces of hell wailed and scratched at the house’s protection. Václav Jaroš told no stories of that night. He did however make sure that the thing in his home never forgot the debt it held. Dorota told the story of that night to her Queen, hoping that the punishment will be understanding. She did not get punished. Instead, she received a new task. Bohdan Jaroš told no stories of that night, for he had no memories of it. 

  
  
  



	2. bluebells

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bohdan Jaroš makes an unpleasant discovery and bluebells ring to announce an upcoming death.

The forest lurked. There was no other way to describe it. It sat on the hillside like a foul-tempered beast, waiting for its next meal. It could consume anything, from sunlight to wildlife, or the occasional passing traveler. This one, however, was not too alluring to the forest’s tastes. He was made of too much the same stuff as the woods; of dark shadows under the brim of a hat, of hungry leanness of wild beasts and leafless trees, of silent threats and too quiet calls for help in too great of a space. And so the forest leaned back on its hillside to watch as Bohdan Jaroš rode on the winding road beneath.

He was in no hurry. The days were short but it was barely noon and Silberstein was less than an hour away. The clang of horseshoes on stone rang against the towering rocks and dark trees of the valley, unbound in the open air. The emptiness of the space wrapped around him and Jaroš found himself sinking into it. It was rare, the moments where he could let himself lost in the depths of the reverberating space. They allowed him to set the wilds of his thought into order, to label the underbrush of sensations and preen out overgrown bushes of desires and fears. Moments like those also allowed him to hide the attacks far easier. He almost hadn’t noticed it at first, the slow rise of pressure on his temples, until it burst through his skull in a sharp ache of shattered bones and cracking ice. The world swayed and melted at the edges with each step of his horse, and the young soldier grasped on the saddle as of the leather under his fingers could keep the sensation away. It couldn’t. The first wave rolled over him in a disorienting mixture of rapid heartbeat and sourness in the mouth. He closed his eyes, hoping that the darkness would prevent what was coming next.

When the attacks first started back in Vienna, the visions were small enough. An odd insect crawling on the wall that would disappear with the pain. A crack in the wall through which distant light would shine. When he opened his eyes now, the whole world shifted around him. The road was gone and he was in the middle of a forest instead. Silvery light reflected on the snow covering the ground and the grim charms of silver and bones hanging from the twisted branches. But that was not the oddest part. Just feet in front of him stood a woman. He had never seen a person in his visions before and the implications made his skin crawl in a different way entirely. The horse stopped dead in its tracks at the sight of her. He took a strained breath and tried to focus on the figure in front of him through the pain. There was nothing human about her, in the way the cold light ghosted over her skin. The wild hair falling nearly to the ground seemed more like feathers and a black tail twitched around her bare thighs. And even without making the slightest sound or move, she was calling out to him. Jaroš half-slid, half-fell off his mare, his boots sinking into the snow. The impact set off another wave of pain in his head and he stumbled and the snow soaked through the sleeves of his jacket. A crunch of ice echoed through the forest and when he managed to lift his head, the woman was standing above him, her clawed feet leaving no trace on the frost. He pushed himself upright, gagging on the mess of unsaid words squirming in his mouth. The woman’s lips opened up in a predatory caricature of a smile and revealed wickedly sharp canines beneath. They flashed in the cold light and with that flash, the vision was gone. 

Bohdan spat on the rocks beneath him. Their sharp edges dug into his palms as he pulled himself up onto his feet. Everything was gone; the twisted trees, the snow, the silvery light. His horse was standing feet away from him, ears pressed back in fear of the thing in front of them. She stood perfectly still, her heavily embroidered skirt shifting in the wind alongside the braid of dark hair and her eyes bore into him with the same predatory intensity as before. Jaroš stood up on unsteady feet and wiped the drool from the corner of his lip with his soaked sleeve. 

“The court is expecting you,” she said with the cadence of breaking bird bones.

He didn’t reply only focused on measuring his breaths, hoping that the trembling heat in his chest would cool. There was danger about her that made the hairs on the back of his neck prick up and he couldn’t face that with the world still smudging around the edges.

Sharp teeth shone between her words as she continued, “You can feel it, the way your body pulls you home. How long do you think this can last before you break?”

“What do you want?”, Jaroš’s voice was hoarse but the words rang in the cold air clear enough.

“Don’t you remember,  _ Bohdan?  _ It’s all in front of you if you look at the shapes the sun makes between branches, that old bones make in the snow.”

His hand edged closer to the handle of his falchion but his eyes never left her. Something twitched under the hem of her dress and he could swear he saw the tip of a tail. The attack must have not passed yet, he reasoned. This was all just a vision. A terrifyingly realistic one, but none of this was real. That’s why she knew his name, that’s why his chest constricted so much.

“You aren’t real. None of this is.” 

Drops of water melted and fell of the dark branches and to the ground.

“Take your time, little one. I’ll be waiting in these hills, find me when you’re ready,” she stepped towards him, humanity melting of her face, “I’d advise you to hurry though, you don’t have much of it.”

Something in him finally settled into place, hardened into the cold iron. His hand curled around the handle and the moment got torn apart in a flash of hot white pain. Jaroš recoiled, the prowling presence in his chest drawing back with a snare. He cradled his hand, observing the line of burnt flesh where he grasped the weapon. A hiss slipped through his lips at the pulsating heat of the injury. This wasn’t supposed to happen, the visions were never physical. They were never of people either. He looked up. The road ahead of him was empty, the world had sharp edges and wind had returned to the trees. Bohdan was left standing alone with a burnt hand and muddled mind and the forest above hummed with amusement.

  
  


The creature on the page in his hands looked up at him, taunting. It wasn’t the same one he had seen in the woods earlier today but there was that sense of wildness, playful danger, in the weathered wood print. 

_ “The faerie folk, though fair in appearance and alluring in their words, are dangerous wicked beasts, only striving to bring a proper man of Christ to his ruin. One must be always cautious when dealing with these creatures, for they will use any matter of unholy magicks to lead those weak of will and faith astray. They can be recognized in any form they take by a strange shadow or by traces of their wicked nature showing through, such as inhuman eyes and sharp teeth. The most proper of protections is prayer and the Lord’s name, but many say that such protections as a blessed crucifix or some herbs gathered by a holy man repel these wicked creatures. Other of their known weaknesses are flowing water and iron, for those can cleanse the unholy spirits from our realm.” _

Iron. Jaroš adjusted the bandage wrapped around his palm, the burn still pulsating faintly. The injury hadn’t disappeared with the vision, and as much as he told himself it must have been burnt by the friction as he slid off his mare, he hadn’t dared to touch his falchion yet. This was madness. Obsessing over some archaic mad ramblings about fairy tales and boogeymen deep into the night, what was he doing? He should just return the book and go to sleep, the captain would be displeased if he was unsatisfactory during the sparring tomorrow because of his own foolishness. Or if he found out what he was reading. To be fair, it was from the castle’s measly book collection, but it was one of the books no one was allowed to read, except for Stein himself, when he got into one of his paranoid moods and needed to re-read about all the things that could be going bump in the night. And yet, Jaroš couldn’t bring himself to return the book just yet. There were more stories about the different tricks the fae would play on unsuspecting people, accompanied by several gruesome illustrations, but nothing that would seem any less unreasonable than the whole concept. And nothing quite as haunting as the first depiction of the fae surrounded by strange, twisted woods. He flipped through the pages mindlessly, occasionally stopping at a passage before moving on in even greater disinterest. Then, he froze. It was another of the full-page illustrations, this one depicting a crib and one of the fae creeping over it, and then, into the background, a seemingly human figure but...wrong. There was something sinister about it, in the emptiness of its eyes and the animalistic shape of its ears.

“ _ The most wicked of all the fae folk preys upon unsuspecting mothers and when their care of their child slips, other of their brethren exchange the infant for one of their own- a changeling. Changelings are from their infanthood easily recognizable by their unnaturally quiet nature, sickly appearance, and later on, inhuman cruelty and cunning, telling of their unholy nature. If a parent recognizes their child is a changeling, the best way to get back their own child is to punish the replacement and make it reveal its true nature, then the faeries will have no other option but to take their spawn back and return the human child. If the parents fail to recognize or return this beast, it will grow in their home and bring nothing but misfortune and misery. It will live in sin and heresy until it reaches adulthood, at which point it will no longer be able to hide its true nature and return to its own. Many good families have been torn apart by such changeling, and their children have never been seen again, certainly perishing in the hands of the fae. If encountering such changeling or suspecting an inhuman nature of one of the youths among your own, it is necessary to act without hesitation and drive the beast away, for even though they may seem human, it is merely a ruse to trick those of good heart.” _

Bohdan re-read the page. Then again, and again. Changelings. A folk legend, a tale to excuse the strangeness of some children. He’d heard it before, even if distantly. It was silly, the idea of a child being stolen and replaced by an identical one, only wrong. But there was something so...uncomfortable about looking at that carving. About the wicked smile of the fae placing the child into the crib, about the thing, it would grow into. He shook his head and closed the book. It was late and his thoughts were muddled, confusing. They beat against his skull madly and it was overwhelming, tense. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, hoping it would push the tension back. Instead, it reeled against his skull and,  _ oh _ , it was another attack. Two in a day was unusual, concerning. Jaroš bent forward and pressed his head between his knees, trying to prevent it from escalating. The pain burst through his temples and rushed through his skull. His breath hitched and fingers dug into his calf but it was too late, and the images flooded his mind.

_ The boy ran through the woods, not afraid just trying to get away. This was his first trip outside the city with his father, his first chance to prove himself, and he did well. Or at least he thought he did well. There were no mistakes in the way he determined the proper length of the rope and put the noose over the neck of the criminal. He was certain of that. And yet, there was no approval in the eyes of his father once the man’s neck snapped, nor was there any when he told the boy to get lost when he tried to sit nearby the conversation his father was having with the mayor of the town. And so, the boy walked out of the room and then begun running deeper and deeper into the woods. It was foolish, he knew, and he also knew that if he failed to return before his father begun questioning his absence, it would surely mean a proper punishment. But he couldn’t stop himself from acting upon the urge to disappear between the twisted tree trunks and darkening foliage. Finally, his small body gave up on him, making him stop to catch his breath in a clearing deep within the woods. Not even the deep breaths and the internal insistence that there was nothing in the events of the day to feel bad about could stop the unpleasant narrowing in his chest, usually connected to his father being angered by something he couldn’t determine. The stream of progressively more frustrated attempts at trying to get himself to calm down was interrupted by a light singing. He turned around, body tensing in anticipation. There was a girl, about his age in an elaborately embroidered dress and with a thick braid of dark hair falling nearly to her knees. She made no sound, except for that light singing in a language he couldn’t determine, and was picking plants from the forest underbrush into a basket in her hands. The boy said nothing but his posture still didn’t shift from readiness to fight. She raised her head from the plants and two pairs of dark eyes met. _

_ “Bluebells,” the girl said twisting a flower between her fingers, “It is said that their ringing signifies the presence of faeries nearby.” _

_ The boy still said nothing. _

_ “I’m Dorota. What’s your name?” _

_ “Bohdan.” _

_ “It is nice to meet you, Bohdan. What are you doing out here this late?” _

_ His posture shifted, not exactly relaxed but less ready to fight. She was just a girl, even smaller than him, but there was still something off about her, about her fine dress in the dark woods. _

_ “I just wanted to get some fresh air. What are you doing?” _

_ Her laughter rang between the trees like the bluebells, “I’m picking flowers, obviously.” _

_ “Isn’t it a bit late for that? It’s almost dark.” _

_ “I’m not afraid of the dark. Are you?” _

_ Bohdan shuffled in place. The girl was asking strange questions and he still didn’t like the way she seemed to beckon to him from between the trees. But it seemed harmless and it would be inappropriate to just deny her the answer. _

_ “I’m not.” _

_ She smiled, and he could swear the teeth that shine through were sharper than usual, “We are of the same kind after all. Good. I was getting afraid that you had thoroughly forgotten.” _

_ “What do you mean by that?” the boy took a step back and the tension returned fully, in cold iron and a suppressed growl. _

_ She swayed on the soles of her feet, the skirts swishing around her bare ankles. _

_ “You’ll find out when the time is right, Bohdan. Soon enough, our blood will let itself be known. I’ll see you then.” _

_ She turned around and begun slipping towards the trees. The boy dashed behind her, questions being tossed around in the rising levels of dread in his chest. _

_ “What blood? Who even are you?” _

_ The trees swallowed her small form, and by the time he reached the place she stood at, there was nothing. Nothing between the trees she stepped between, no traces of her presence in the ground. Only a bluebell flower laying discarded on the ground. _

Bohdan’s head snapped up, his breath coming out ragged and quick. There were no visions this time, just an old memory. His hand subconsciously grasped his arm on the place his father burned him that evening for running off into the woods. That girl...the embroidered skirt, that black hair, and darker eyes. This was ridiculous. There was no way she could have found him after all these years, no way anyone would have done it just to give him more cryptic messages. It must have been a vision, the first signs of madness brewing in him. Lord, how long did he have until he fully broke? How much longer until he couldn’t hide it from Stein? Jaroš stood up on shaky legs and walked to the washbasin, submerging his face in the freezing water in hopes of suppressing his headache. The cold sunk into his temples and cooled around the pain, lessening the tension. His head lifted and he met his own gaze in the mirror above, freezing at the reflection. It was him, the familiar if unpleasant sharp cut of his cheekbones, bags under eyes and thin lips. But it was wrong. Horribly wrong. The ears twitched against his hair, long and animal-like. He had to be hallucinating again, just a strange output of the book he had just read. With a sharp inhale his teeth bared, sharp and inhuman. The pain struck again, piercing through his head, making him slide to the ground with a whimper. His fingers, no, claws dug into the sides of his head, as he stifled the involuntary sounds of pain. The blood in his veins was calling out to him, struggling and tearing at the layers of white-hot magic and stone-cold self-constraint, not caring of how much it damaged in its way out. 

_ How long do you think you can last before you break? _

His breaths grew longer and deeper, the world still blurry but not fading from his grasp anymore. Jaroš uncurled from the pose he was huddled in, not daring to try and stand up just yet. The attack was gone, it must have been, but the vision didn’t go away. He opened and closed his fist, somewhat distantly observing the candlelight on the sharp, black claws. Ears were still elongated and so much more sensitive than usual, tensely pressed against his scalp. His mind was feverishly going over explanations, over possibilities of how could he hide the fact that he had fully lost it from the Steins. But the only thing it went back to was that page in the book. Changelings. 

_ I have always known you are a monster, Bohdan. I tried to cure you, but now I see your nature can not be changed.  _

Outside, the faint ringing of bells carried through the winter night, and inside ghosts tugged on Bohdan Jaroš, as blood called for its due.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my work! A couple of notes for reference.
> 
> 1\. The characters are from a Czech/Slovak book series called The Cases of Captain Stein and Notary Barbaric, which are detective novels set in the late 16th/early 17th century Hungarian and Czech Kingdom and it’s pretty great. Sadly, it only exists in Czech and Slovak but a television show based on one of the books should come out in the next two years and I really hope it’ll bring more focus onto this wonderful series.
> 
> 2\. Dorota is my OC based on an offhand comment in the second book about Jaroš' dead mother and sister.  
3\. I hereby once again blame and thank Izvin for supporting me in this mad endeavor. Go check her out here on AO3, for some utterly amazing content!


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